


Pride

by Taricha



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-21
Updated: 2011-04-21
Packaged: 2017-10-18 11:16:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taricha/pseuds/Taricha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ruby's problem had always been pride, and her pursuits to gain it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pride

Back when Ruby had still been alive, she'd had some problems with her self esteem. Of course, life as a scullery maid in the thirteen hundreds wasn't easy, though there were many at the time who envied her the position. Her hands were rough and sometimes burnt from scrubbing with lye, and saying anything of any intelligence was liable to get her scolded for her tongue, so gratification wasn't particularly easy to come by. So when Ruby finally found a place to shine, it wasn't in her appearance (mediocre at best), her intelligence (unappreciated, underdeveloped) or her skill at scrubbing (poor - she was easily distracted and had sensitive skin). Instead, it was in witchcraft.

Her first spell had been simple. She'd burnt a candle and prayed for her spots to disappear while breathing in the smoke and the smell of lavender. The next day, she'd lost not only her pimples, but also misplaced her freckles and two of her larger moles. Things sort of accelerated from there, and Ruby sold her soul more by accident than anything, not that it made much difference in the end.

A few years before her deal was due, the black plague came, and someone discovered she was a witch. Strangely enough she'd been revealed because someone had overheard her reciting poetry, when she wasn't supposed to be able to read. Life's funny that way, sometimes.

Being a witch had masked her self-hatred, but it hadn't cured it. By the time she felt the rope tighten around her neck, Ruby always smelled of flowers and had more admirers than half of the women in Europe. It didn't matter. She still thought she was a waste of time and space.

The demons in hell had agreed with her, and by the time she finally crawled out, she found herself consumed by the need to prove them wrong, prove herself wrong. Most of those who escaped hell turned to violence, and she could have done so as well. She could have torn limbs from bodies, raped and pillaged and laughed, splattered her with young blood. She went for the long con instead.

It was Lilith's plan, but it was Ruby's lies that made it happen. When she finally found Sam, she corrupted him with her whispers, tugged him along behind her dropping hints like treasures for him to find. After Dean died she added touches, letting the brush of her skin against his tip him further and further over the line, letting her body finish what his grief had started. She told him she loved him, and she wasn't lying - as much as a creature like her could love, she cared for who he was and what he was capable of. He was hers, in every way that was important. She hadn't birthed him, but she had molded him more completely than any mother could have, and every slip he took gave her a rush of pride, like a parent watching their toddler take their first steps. These steps were backwards, stumbling towards the pit instead of the sky, but the concept was the same. Ruby almost didn't want to give him up to Lucifer, this black-eyed perfection of her creation.

Watching Lilith's blood spill across the floor, drip into channels and hexes to unlock her masters cage, Ruby felt finally whole. The burn of Sam's knife inside her belly was a surprise, but even as her life flickered and flared out, she could not suppress her joy. More potent than the demon blade, it burnt her up from the inside out, one last flame to end it all.

At last, at long last, she had proved how good she could be.


End file.
